MTA Boss To Mayor: Building Bus Lanes is Your Legal Requirement

He threw the book at him — the law book.

MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber reminded Mayor Adams that he is required, by city law, to build bus lanes at a far faster pace than he’s accomplished in his two-plus years in office — and that the MTA is ready to help.

“We need more bus lanes. It is the law of the City of New York, the Streets Plan that was passed by the Council and made into law,” Lieber said. “And the MTA is ready to work. In fact, we’re ready to step up and help the city with the community work and the analytics that go into this. We’ve offered to take some of the burden off their shoulders, so we’re ready to go. I stood with the mayor a couple of years ago and said we want to really make buses faster. Bus lanes are part of that and I want to renew my offer to do everything possible to enable the city to make good on their commitments.”

Lieber made his offer to the mayor in response to a Streetsblog story on Monday that revealed that the city had only presented four bus lane projects for installation in 2024, totaling a paltry seven miles of red paint.

That’s far less than the Adams administration needs to paint if it is to meet its requirement under the Streets Master Plan: 150 miles of bus lanes between by the end of 2026. Even from the start of the Adams administration, before 2022 was even over, city officials said they wouldn’t hit their benchmarks, or anything close to them.

They haven’t come close: By the end of 2022, the DOT completed 11.9 miles of bus lanes. The next year, 15.7 miles. But this year’s pace suggests the DOT won’t even make low-double-digits.

This also isn’t the first time the MTA has taken to using the press to ask the mayor to take bus priority seriously. In 2023, then-New York City Transit President Rich Davey begged the mayor to “stay with us” and finish the proposed Fordham Road offset bus lane. Adams’s response was to walk away from Fordham Road bus riders just two months later, a decision that’s still hurting bus riders in that part of the Bronx, a majority of whom earn less than $50,000 per year, according to data from Replica. (See charts below.)

The mayor and the head of the MTA have of course been at odds in the past. During the depths of the pandemic, then-mayor Bill de Blasio resisted calls from then-NYCT president Sarah Feinberg to build 60 miles of bus lanes as the economy reopened. She later tweaked de Blasio when even his DOT commissioner admitted the city could stand to put red paint in faster.

This is supposed to be a new era of cooperation and understanding between the city and the MTA. But three years into the Adams administration, the gloves are off.

Streetsblog reached out to City Hall for comment and will update this story if we receive one. Previously, a spokesperson for the DOT said far more mileage than seven would end up being installed by the end of the year.

The charts below show income patterns for people in Bronx Community Board 6 who take transit (chart 1) vs. those who drive their own car or take a cab (chart 2).